Re: latin verb examples and tense meanings

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU]On
> Behalf Of Steg Belsky
> Sent: Saturday, January 15, 2000 5:48 PM
> To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
> Subject: Re: latin verb examples and tense meanings
> On Sat, 15 Jan 2000 14:51:34 +0100 Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
> writes:
> > >I simply can't remember (too much time has passed, and many a
> > supine
> > >have I seen since then).  I remember that the principal parts of
> > >"sum" as "sum, esse, fui, futurus", but there is neither ppp or
> > supine
> > >of "sum" anyway, no?
> > Correct - neither would give any intelligible meaning.
> When i found out that Latin had a passive paradigm, i was looking
> forwards to finding out the passive forms of "to be" so that i could use
> them for the verb "to become" in Jûdajca, the way Hebrew does.
> Do you think it would be possible for an entire paradigm to be made up
> without a previous record of its use?  In Semitic languages it doesn't
> seem that hard, i do it a lot myself :-). but in a Romance language i
> don't know how flexible it would be.
I dunno about creating a whole paradigm, but maybe you could a reflexive of
"to be" instead? In Spanish at least, a lot of reflexives work like passives
(<Se habla espan~ol>="Spanish is spoken"). Or perhaps you could use the
periphrastic passive of Vulgar Latin, "to be"+perfect participle, making up
a new participle for <esse> by analogy. For instance, from the verb <ser>
"to be," Spanish has <sido> for the participle. It's not used as a passive
though.

Eric Christopherson
raccoon@elknet.net